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Aviation History
1978
1978 - 0080.PDF
navigators are practising the art. The flood of black boxes is transforming navigation from an art to a science, per- I mitting pilots to take the direction-finding task in their stride. In practice the artistic touch has not been entirely eliminated, the electronics simply having made it unnecessary for crews to be fully conversant with naviga tional techniques. A fully trained navigator will usually derive more information from an electronic system than would a multi-purpose crewman, though the value of such data is no longer great enough to justify the expense of carrying a navigator on commercial airliners. It has fallen to equipment manufacturers, particularly in the general- aviation sector, to educate pilots in navigational techniques. Often their pupils are part-time pundits who have come to regard their dead-reckoning experience as a sixth sense. The market has been swamped by literature, usually illustrated with pages of knob-position diagrams, which explains navigation planning and techniques. A lot of it is regarded as too long-winded or complicated by many part- time pilots. A lot of them consequently soldier on with their favourite old-time techniques, often ignoring multi- thousand-dollar extras that could save a few minutes, precious fuel and a lot of mental stress. RNav under-utilised For all their value, modern area-navigation (RNav) systems are still under-utilised. The light-aircraft pilot often heads for destinations that are well away from navigation aids. Using normal equipment he can fly towards the destination by tracking along a VOR radial and search- 1 ing frantically for the airfield when a wind-spoilt time calculation suggests that he is close, or when distance- measuring equipment, if available, reveals a more precise < position. A $2,000-3,000 RNav system will accept the airfield . position, usually expressed as a bearing and distance \ relative to the selected radio aid. Then, when told its present position, in similar terms, it will indicate a direct J Heading A Boeing 747, seen from another 747 one sunny morning near Heathrow, navigates its way home. Aviators might recognise Brooklands, now British Aerospace Weybridge, at the bottom right-hand corner. Left The Collins ANS-351, introduced last year, is an eight- waypoint "fly-anywhere" navigation system for private pilots. It measures 6-25in x l-7Sin and weighs only 3-31b Electronics have taken over many traditional navi gating tasks and now exert an influence on the pilots of large and small aircraft alike. MIKE HIRST looks at how the new systems have affected private pilots, who now fly more miles than ever on the minimum of navigation training, at airline-standard develop ments, and at some of the changes in prospect. AVIATION, more than most industries, is used to changes. Even so, the airframe companies have tended over ^ the last ten years or so to make small improvements to existing designs, whether airliners or light aircraft, or have launched new projects characterised more by their commercial than their technical risks. The same cannot be said of the navigation equipment industry, however. Technical risk has figured significantly in most companies' plans, and the result has been a series of quantum leaps in the navigational capabilities of every category of aircraft. Only the most optimistic forecast of 10 years ago predicted the degree to which airliner-style navigation systems are packed into light aircraft these days. Mean while, although the accuracy of airliner navigation systems has not increased markedly since the late 1960s, operational flexibility and installation and operating costs have con tinued to improve. Moreover, there is no sign that this trend is running out of momentum. The need for high-accuracy instantaneous fixes has grown as aircraft speeds have increased, and navigation systems that produce this performance have appeared in large numbers. Although a good human navigator is still the equal of any electronic box, specialist training in the necessary skills is confined largely to the military. While more aircraft are flying more miles than ever, fewer
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